


Legacy Roles

by brawltogethernow



Category: DCU, Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Ficlet, Klaus and Lucrezia looming in the background, Multi, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-23 23:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: A DC AU with Tarvek as Red Hood was brought to the table.Tarvek wakes up after dying.





	Legacy Roles

Tarvek, Klaus’ second sidekick, hates and admires his predecessor, Gil. Tarvek has his own skills, plenty of them thank you very much, but he can’t shake the feeling that Klaus is looking at him and searching for something else. A cocky grin, an easy way with people, and a goodness strong enough to balance his mentor. Tarvek knows he doesn’t have that, alright? Tarvek knows.

He isn’t acrobatic, like Gil, can’t laugh off gravity like it’s nothing, doesn’t have that easy understanding of his own body. And Gil? Gil resents him, and it took Tarvek time to properly understand _why._

He does, now, but that hasn’t made it hurt less. It _stings,_ being resented by someone you ~~love~~ admire so much.

Tarvek masters it. His goal isn’t and _never has been_ to be exactly like Gilgamesh Hollzfäller.

He’s not quite a hero, but he’s going to try his best to be something, anyway.  
  


 

Gil easily danced his way out of a dozen altercations such as the one that kills Tarvek with flips and laughs.

Maybe he really was missing something vital, is one of the last things he thinks as he waits for a rescue to come that…doesn’t.  
  


 

Tarvek wakes up after dying.

Tarvek wakes up screaming and wild from one of Lucrezia Mongfish’s mad and distressingly functional experiments in eternal life.

Heroes get brought back so often it’s hardly surprising anymore. But not. Not like this.

Lucrezia is the same as always, and Tarvek plays along, at first, but then there’s a girl.

At first Tarvek thinks she’s a trick. Because she’s obviously one of Lucrezia’s spare bodies, with her distinctive gold hair, vivid even in the sickly light of the Pit, and the voice Tarvek has heard croon to his mentor — his old mentor — in a hundred different tones.

But she’s _not_ , the girl insists. She’s her _daughter_ , and she thinks that she should know, thanks, but if he’s going to be cheeky maybe she won’t help him away from Lucrezia and her plans to use him as a tool after all.

“You look like you’ve been playing along with her,” she says, “but _I_ need help out of here, too, so we need to make this work.”

The girl, whose name is Agatha (and that’s odd, in a family of Lucrezias and Serpentinas and Demonicas) is brilliant, and Tarvek falls a little bit in love.

(Again.)  
  


 

Tarvek goes back to Klaus’ city. It’s not smart, but the whole world has always been there, for Tarvek, and other places just don’t compare. And there’s still so much to be _done_ , so much more than Klaus will ever do.

Klaus has taken a new apprentice, and Tarvek understands, viscerally, why Gil was such an utter boor sometimes.

Tarvek goes back, but not backwards. He’s done pretending to be something he’s not. He’s not a hero, so he doesn’t belong with them, shouldn’t wear their trappings.

He’s better at other things. He _learned_ things from Lucrezia, and he’s going to put them to _good use_.  
  


 

Gil’s scorn hurts, again, but differently now. This is personal, and real. This has nothing to do with Gil’s confused relationship with his father. (His _father_ , of all the things to come out while you’re dead —) The scowls on Gil’s face say _I don’t understand how you can be like this._

But Gil and Klaus were never entirely approving of him, so it doesn’t mean much.  
  


 

What does matter is — 

Tarvek doesn’t realize he’s become someone he doesn’t like until he meets Agatha again.

Agatha has come into her own, out of the darkness of Lucrezia’s main lair. He’s heard a few rumors about how it’s like a kicked hornet’s nest wherever she goes, accompanied by an increasingly colorful cast of metas and just generally odd people. (Okay, he obsessively seeks out and collects newspaper articles.) But in person she’s…something. The last clinging, sucking weight of her past has left her, and Tarvek feels envy at that, briefly and violently.

She’s a sight, and it’s the look on her face when she sees what he’s doing that makes him realize he’s become something horrible. His feelings when it’s time to share his plans with her, the panicky guilt of a child who has done something they know is wrong, that confirms he’s gone too far.  
  


 

“I can become a better person if it’s for you,” he insists.

“That’s not how being a good person _works_ ,” she says, sounding fed up with him.  
  


 

When he sees Gil again after that Gil of course doesn’t trust him, and he doesn’t like how Agatha trusts him. Apparently, they know each other. And Tarvek is so used to being resentful of Gil that he doesn’t see it for what it is how Gil is a thousand times more tolerant of Tarvek than Klaus, who Gil looks up to more than anyone else in the world, is.

Gil says “You shouldn’t be here,” and Tarvek hears, “I don’t want you here” where he means “It’s not safe; you’re making things harder for yourself.” And Gil, who was mentored by the king of poor communication, never voices “I’m so glad you’re back.”


End file.
